Format drives for Final Cut Pro X, Motion, and Compressor

Use the APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format for drives you're using with Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Compressor.

Drives sold pre-formatted with a format such as FAT32 might not perform as expected with Final Cut Pro, Motion, or Compressor.

To check the format of a drive, select the drive in the Finder, then choose Get Info from the File menu. The format is shown in the Format section under General Information.

If you need to format a drive, use the APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format for best performance. If your Mac is running macOS Mojave or later, use the APFS format. When you format a drive, any data on the volume is deleted, so make sure you create a backup if you want to keep the data.